Little red canoe

It was pretty quiet on Lac Ashton when I sketched this. Just the sound of waves hitting the dock and this.

Magic boat

I am always excited when people suggest things for me to sketch. My friend George thought I might be interested in drawing this rowboat (he calls it his “chaloupe”) that he inherited when he bought his cottage by the lake. It’s a bit of a magic boat because when it’s out on the lake, water pours in from a bunch of rusty holes in the bottom. And yet when it’s on land it fills up with water that just never seems to drain. I struggled with this sketch for a long time. I hope it reads as a boat full of murky water.

St. Viateur bagels

St. Viateur Bagel bakery has special significance to me not just because they have the best bagels in the city but also because my father grew up across the street from here. It’s a Montreal landmark and people line up at all hours of the day or night to buy a dozen of these hand-rolled, baked in a wood oven bagels. Ask any Montrealer and they will confess that rarely does the whole dozen make it home.

Conservatory Interior

Being inside a greenhouse is a very relaxing way to spend a day — the sound of trickling water along with the tropical flowers and foliage have a very calming effect on the urban sketcher (if you don’t mind a bit of humidity). On the second day of my Montreal workshop students did some beautiful watercolours so it was probably a good thing the threat of rain pushed us indoors. Magically there were no unexpected events and I think everyone had a chance to practice what they learned yesterday. Today we worked on thumbnails and I borrowed a pencil from one of the students for my sketch below. This is done with a black Derwent Inktense which is water-soluble and apparently more vibrant (if you use the coloured versions) than traditional watercolour pencils. I loved the darkness I was able to create when I wet the surface of the paper. Rich, deep black. I may have to get myself one of those!

Conservatory

Today the students in my final workshop of the summer learned the best urban sketching lesson. When you sketch outside you have to be prepared for surprises. I have lots of experience with that (trucks parking in front of me, rain on location in Paris, irate bus drivers) so I am used to the unexpected and have learned to adapt. In fact I like those events because I can usually turn them into a story.

During my second demo of the day, in front of the conservatory in Westmount Park, everyone was gathered around watching me paint when the irrigation system went off around us (observant sketchers that we are, none of us had noticed the nozzles hidden in the grass!). We all got soaked, some of the paintings got a bit wet and everyone turned to me and said “This is a story for your blog!”.

Here are some of the students, hard at work, before the sprinklers went off. I usually try to get a group photo in at the end of they day but after we moved everything away from the nozzles, a second (hidden) set went off and that kind of ended things for the day. The group shot will have to be tomorrow.

Windsock

The clouds have been quite amazing this week and I have been doing too much city sketching so today I went to a place where I could get some good views of sky. Macdonald farm in Ste. Anne de Bellevue is always a favourite for me because of all the old farm buildings. Fortunately there were no silage operations going on (like when I held a workshop in June) and there was a perfect spot to set up my easel in the shade.

Great Wall

This isn’t the Great Wall of China but it is a great wall of stone to paint in the Chinese section of the Botanical Gardens. I’m not quite sure what paper I painted this on because I have some small remnants of watercolour paper with no visible watermarks, but this was like painting on a paper towel. The paper just soaked up all the pigment and it was near impossible to get a hard edge. Just as I was finishing this some workers came along and placed some inflatable balloons that were supposed to look like the Great Wall, except in plastic. Glad I got my sketch in before that.

Spectator

The end of the story with the restaurant guy from the back alley is that I did not do any drawings of him, with or without clothing. But I did have the opportunity to take out my sketchbook at a concert last night. This Neil Young lookalike was sitting nearby and the sad sack quality of his face was too hard to pass up. I tried to draw the great Steve Earle but I think I may have been sitting just a bit too far to capture the details. He ended up looking like some kind of garden gnome (minus the hat) because of his straggly beard so those drawings shall remain unpublished.

Back alley

I don’t often have requests for commissions but today I had two. The first one was from a lady who asked me to do some sketches of her son’s house so she can give them to him as a gift. The second one was from a guy who works in a restaurant that opens onto the alley I was painting in the Mile End district in Montreal. When he saw me drawing he asked if I would sketch him. Since I am always looking for people to draw I said, “Sure, come back when you are on break and I’ll do a sketch of you.” Not five minutes had passed when he popped back out, sidled up next to me, and told me that what he really wanted was a drawing of himself, naked, that he could hang on his wall. I suggested that he volunteer to model for a life drawing class. That way he would have 15 or 20 nude drawings of himself to choose from. Turns out he is too shy to do that. And teaches me that it is probably not a good idea to sit in a back alley with pencil in hand.

Japanese lantern

Here’s the third sketch that I did in the Botanical Gardens the other day — this one again from the Japanese Garden. I’m trying a new mix for greens: viridian, cobalt blue, ochre and new gamboge. Viridian is such a horrible, artificial colour but it mixes really well with the blue and the yellows and you can get some great darks with it.